


The Proof of the Pudding

by monoquist



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Andy/Quynh if you squint, Attempt at Humor, Crack, Established Relationship, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Multi, Past Lives, Slice of Life, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monoquist/pseuds/monoquist
Summary: Technology moves with the times.It just so happens that for some of the Old Guard, that movement also involves them being dragged kicking and screaming into the future.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 277





	The Proof of the Pudding

**56 BCE, Northern Gaul:**

Gaul is a whole divided into three parts.

Lykon’s problem with this is that he’s never really sure which part they’re siding with on any given day.

Quynh and Andromache are united in their desire to aid the tribes of Gaul in their fight against the relentless march of the Romans. Lykon himself is able to empathise, remembering only too clearly the suffering wrought upon the common people when Alexander III of Macedon had invaded Judea.

What he really doesn’t like about all this is the fact that _nothing_ is going to make a difference in the long run. No, by his 247th summer, he has come to realise that the victims of present wars are only far too likely to be the aggressors of the next. The Gauls are a warlike race, and the men the trio saved were only too likely to look to their neighbours with an appraising eye whenever there were no more Romans left to fight. What, then, was the point?

‘You are too young to be so cynical, Lykon,’ Quynh smiles at him when he tries to explain the ennui that has weighed heavily upon his spirits of late. ‘It is perhaps time for a holiday?’

Lykon considers this slowly, and nods after a moment.

They _have_ been fighting for months now, and he has long grown sick of the rain and the clamour and the endless deaths. He’s annoyed enough to want to starve rather than eat another dry rusk of barley bread to sustain him through another day. Andromache is not pleased with the fare either, but war sings in her blood, and Lykon knows from experience that the bloodlust is enough to keep her going till there is no one left to kill. Quynh—as he knows from a mortifying incident years ago when he had managed to drink enough bad beer to lose his natural shyness in front of beautiful women—would much prefer Andromache’s company.

Two months go by, and Lykon begins to feel more like himself again. He’s found an abandoned hut that looks ready to collapse on itself, and a hilltop village just two hours away by foot. He spends his nights in dreamless slumber, and awakens refreshed to do honest labour to make the hut less likely to cave in on his head while he sleeps. He is taking a holiday after all and deserves a rest from traumatic deaths.

Already, Andromache and Quynh have begun to appear in his dreams. Flashes, nothing more, but enough to tell him that the fighting is still ongoing. The two of them still fighting the good fight and scattering corpses like breadcrumbs to help him make his way back to them.

Lykon’s lip curls in distaste as he contemplates the search that lay ahead of him. Sinking ankle-deep in fields coated with blood and viscera as he treks through site after site to find his companions. If only there was a quicker way. If only they could convey messages quickly over a great distance, allowing them to arrange for a time and place to meet…

As he finishes applying a new layer of thatching to the roof, he spies a flock of geese flying south.

An idea begins to take root.

He catches the pigeons lurking in his garden and spends half a day building a large cage for them. Another week goes by as the birds learn to associate their new home with the superior grain that Lykon has lovingly procured for their meals. When everything is ready, Lykon releases the birds a few metres outside of his house, and is irritated at having no one to hug when they successfully flap their way back into the house and return to their cage. By the end of the week, both pigeons have become accustomed to making their way home even from a distance of up to five miles.

One evening, he spies a tendril of smoke rising from his house on his way back. Instinctively, he quietens his steps and slides a blade into his hand as he makes his way forward. He bursts in, prepared to slit the invader’s throat, only to stop dead in his tracks as Quynh and Andy look up at him in surprise.

‘Lykon!’ Quynh waggles her fingers at him.

‘Both of you, how…?’ Lykon stares at her, flabbergasted, and then looks back at Andromache who nods to him coolly as she continues to sharpen her axe.

‘You left a window open,’ Quynh shrugs, and returns to the fireplace where she gives the pot a hopeful stir with a ladle. The heady scent of a spicy meat stew begins to permeate the hut.

Lykon stares in silence at the pile of feathers by the cage, and Andromache soon turns to follow his gaze.

‘A living larder. That’s clever,’ she allows in a manner Lykon knows is meant to be nice but which just comes across as disparaging of his ability to hunt for his daily meals.

‘Lykon is a genius,’ Quynh says fervently, clearly still riding the high of the thought of having a hot meal with delicious meat.

‘But the birds weren’t… they were…’ Lykon tries and is suddenly aware of a suffocating pressure as Andromache glances up at him. Slowly, chillingly, she bares her teeth at him as if to say that she had no objections to finding a substitute for the meat in the pot.

Lykon sighs deeply.

Perhaps it is time for another holiday.

* * *

**30 juli 1618 n.m., Amsterdam:**

‘How can you be sure that it can be trusted?’ Andrea says, fingers tapping rhythmically against the wooden table surface.

Nicolo shrugs, choosing to take a sip of his coffee instead.

Their unlikely group of four had hitched a ride with the _ter Tholen_ on its way back to Amsterdam, and upon arrival, proceeded to roll off the planks and into the closest public house they could find, much like the rest of the crew. Three days later, however, they were beginning to feel the itch to move on. 

‘It is difficult to tell,’ says Joseph, ‘but people are also very good at lying.’

‘That’s what we have her for,’ Andrea says sourly as she jerks a thumb towards Quynh who is sitting two tables over, smiling unabashedly and chatting animatedly with two patrons who look like they can’t believe their luck.

‘Well, yes, but this way, you do not have to speak with anyone you do not wish to, and that is a very good thing,’ Nicolo continues blithely before he chokes on his coffee apropos of nothing as Joseph smiles at him.

Andrea keeps her eyes determinedly above the table.

‘I don’t know if I trust a stranger somewhere to put down these words about an event he has not seen and knows nothing about. Even his soul is not to be seen from these impersonal letters. He even keeps his name hidden, and the name of the one who has witnessed these events. And the evidence that we have come into contact with this new information sheets is only too obvious,’ she says, eyeing the smudges on her fingertips with distaste.

‘I mean, look at this,’ she continues to rant as she flips to the back of the _Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c._

Beside her, Joseph leans in to wipe away a stray drop of coffee on Nicolo’s chin.

‘This isn’t even new information. The second defenestration of Prague took place over two centuries ago, so whatever this is, this…’

Her voice trails off as she continues reading the article, her eyes glued to the paper.

‘Mm?’ asks Joseph in a tone that suggests he’s anything but curious about her answer.

‘We’re moving out tonight,’ Andrea says at last, her eyes flinty.

‘Prague?’ Quynh asks lightly as she slinks back to their table.

‘Prague.’

* * *

**22 juillet 1845, Rouen:**

Being alone probably wasn’t as bad as she remembers it being, thinks Andy uncharitably.

Overhead, the sunlight is unpleasantly warm on her skin. If it’s bad for her, it has to be absolutely roasting Nicky’s fairer skin, but the man himself appears not to notice. Instead, he is enthusiastically raising his left arm at a right angle while shooting little glances at her as though he were asking about the hold-up.

‘I still think smoke signals work just fine.’

‘But this is better for the air,’ Nicky tells her, in a tone that suggests they have had this exact conversation many times before.

She exhales heavily through her nose and raises the telescope to her eyes again.

Standing at the top of Mont Saint-Aignon, Joey’s expression is obscured by the tangle of seaweed growing on his face, but what he lacks in style awareness, he makes up for with sheer confidence. His left arm is similarly thrust skywards in mimicry of Nicky’s pose.

Beside him, the glint of sunlight on metal can be seen. Andy notes clinically that Le Livre is in the same boat as her, though he looks perfectly at ease in the sunlight. It is difficult to be even less impressed than Andy by their team’s recent obsession with the new communications system, but Le Livre is managing to convey his distaste for their inelegant co-opting of the optical telegraph with his posture alone.

‘I,’ she tells Nicky at last.

He beams and proceeds to raise his shoulders while thrusting both arms out as though an invisible layer of fat encircled his belly causing him to be unable to rest them by his side.

‘L.’

Nicky sticks his left arm out and places his right arm at a 45 degree angle to his stomach.

‘O,’ says Andy dully after a moment.

She shifts the telescope a little and notices Le Livre slinging his bag over his shoulder as he begins to make his way down the hill. Behind him, Joey looks torn between going after him and maintaining his current pose on the off chance that Andy has yet to record his response.

‘Right. We’re done here too.’

‘Why?’ protests Nicky. ‘My message’s incomplete!’

‘Believe me, he already knows what it’s about. We _all_ know,’ Andy says drily. 

* * *

**November 14, 1995, Washington, D.C.:**

It is a quarter past 10, and Booker is battling the urge to cry.

‘I didn’t use my real name in my email address,’ Joe says defensively.

Booker stares at him.

‘Excuse me, but is this email from you—joe1066@hotmail.com?’

‘Well, Joe was unavailable so I had to add—oh.’

‘Oh,’ agrees Booker grimly. ‘To repeat, it is not a good idea to use our real information.’

Beside him, Nicky is also having trouble. He sits up and puts his hand in the air, even as he looks over his shoulder at Joe to see if he’s having better luck with their task for the day. After the recent fiasco where Nicky and Joe had attempted to present handwritten letters of introduction at the Qatari embassy, the team was finally persuaded to spend a week on a crash course in computer literacy.

At the back of the room, Andy is pecking away slowly but surely at the keyboard. Booker smiles faintly. At the very least, he has one student who does not give him trouble.

‘I need help over here,’ says Nicky. ‘It keeps saying “incorrect password”.’

Booker circles the desk to watch Nicky attempt to key in his password again. And again. And again.

‘Nicky,’ Booker says at last. ‘Have you forgotten your password? Why are you trying so many different passwords?’

‘Because I do not know the answer,’ Nicky says despondently. ‘I got it right on my first try previously and managed to access the inbox. I didn’t know it was going to be so difficult to do it again.’

Booker stares at him blankly.

‘When you say “your first try”, you mean?’

‘Uh, after you gave us a hint and said it had many characters and included a few numbers and symbols.’

Mon dieu. He is an immortal and yet he feels curiously like death.

He resets Nicky’s password, helps Joe to create a new account, and is beginning to feel better by the time the two have discovered that they now have a new medium in which they can express their undying love for each other.

Booker cracks his neck, and moves towards his star pupil who is looking extremely pleased with herself. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing, even before Andy looks up at his approach and waggles a flat-head screwdriver at him. On closer inspection, Booker sees that all the keys have been manually prised out and put back in alphabetical order. (‘You got a defective model, but it was easy enough to fix,’ says Andy.) 

It’s taken him over two centuries, thinks Booker, but he understands at last that the noose around his neck is a computer cable.

* * *

**令** **和** **5年1月29** **日** **,** **大** **阪** **:**

There was a time a phone was something precious to her, Nile thinks sadly as she crushes another burner phone into the ground with her heel.

‘You always have that look in your eyes when you do that,’ Nicky laughs as he and Joe walk up to the house, laden down with enough bags of food to feed an army.

‘Oh I know the one,’ Andy says from the doorway, and she proceeds to pull the most ridiculous woebegone expression she can manage, causing the rest to crack up as Nile rolls her eyes.

‘Just because the rest of you like living like the Amish,’ she sniffs. 

‘Hey,’ Booker objects mildly.

‘Except for you, you’re my favourite,’ she tells him and she’s not even joking.

The problem with being the youngest immortal in the group is that she’s not only young in comparison to these supercentenarians, but young even in comparison to the average person. The rest of them may wish for nothing better than to live sickeningly wholesome lives in between their jobs, but Nile wants to explore, see the world, and document every moment and experience so that she would never forget. Not even when she gets as old as Andy.

Dinner that night is a joyous affair. With everyone gathered around the hotpot and about to dig in, even Andy raises only a token protest when Nile whips out her phone and pleads to take a photo together. (‘It’s not going to steal your soul, Andy, we’ve talked about this!’) They’re basking in their post-mission euphoria, and laughter comes easily to them as they make fun of one another’s foibles.

Joe comes up to her later, as she’s sipping her wine and looking down at her phone.

‘We look happy,’ he says as he studies the photo over her shoulder.

Things between him and Booker have remained strained for some time, but for the first time ever, Nile feels confident that the awkwardness will pass. Given enough time, their little family will knit itself back together again. She glances back into the living room, and sees Andy curled up in a corner with a book and Nicky standing before the television set with a remote control in each hand. 

‘Why are there two of these?’ she hears Nicky ask Booker.

With the hollow look of a man who has been the go-to tech guy for centuries, the other man pads over to him and takes over automatically.

‘I think we are,’ she says after a moment. ‘Don’t you?’

* * *

**+1:**

‘I used to think guys were all about the dick pics but you’ve proven me wrong,’ Nile says, pleased to have found the one silver lining of being in a team with her geriatric seniors.

A strange speculative gleam comes into Nicky’s eyes. He glances at Joe from underneath his lashes as he slides a phone into his pocket.

‘…I believe that is my cue,’ says Joe warmly. ‘Good night everyone.’

‘It's not meant to be a communal activity!’ Nile shouts after them, but no one is listening.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Creative liberties taken with historical events aside, if anyone spots an error, I would love to hear about it! 
> 
> 2\. Random trivia that I found in the course of writing this fic: The French were the only people to have worked backwards to ensure that their electrical telegraph system followed optical telegraph indicators in order to cut down on staff retraining. 
> 
> 3\. More random trivia: The Dutch _Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c._ is arguably the world's first newspaper published between 14-18 June 1618 in Amsterdam. In this story, the Old Guard was on the return leg of the ter Tholen's 1617 voyage and returned in mid-June 1618. On 30 June, Andy read a paper which included an article on the rampant looting and pillaging in the aftermath of the Battle of White Mountain.


End file.
